This is (still) a shambles

Thousands of people who didn't need Covid-19 testing were processed last week, and some who did qualify for it were turned away. Photo / NZ Herald

Last week this country was officially put at the top of the world list in terms of how effectively it was protecting its people against Covid-19. ACT leader David Seymour had earlier put our record thus far down to "dumb luck" rather than good management, and he was right.

It is true that community transmissions have been, and thus far continue to be, very low by world standards, but in many ways the process of preventing an outbreak has been a shambles, and 10 months after the national lockdown, it still is.

From the start many of the decisions have been ad hoc, from the declaration of those industries and activities that were essential, and thus permitted to continue, such as supermarkets, and those that were not, such as butchers and greengrocers, or even the maintenance of golf courses and trapping of pests, and the messages have been mixed, to say the least.

We seem to be stumbling from one potential crisis, or nonsensical decision to the next. And it isn't getting any better.

There is no accounting for individual stupidity, of course, such as that displayed by the MIQ employee who reportedly spent 20 minutes in the hotel room of a returnee, but many of the decisions being made on our behalf are irrational and/or grossly unfair.

How is it that the government's 'contingencies' for emergency places in MIQ were sufficient to enable the Wiggles, and 10 of their crew, to come here for a tour after they apparently failed to make their applications in time, but a New Zealander in Japan, who has been given a couple of months to live, wasn't sufficiently urgent to warrant the same consideration? How is it that the government expects us to believe that letting the Wiggles in doesn't deprive 14 desperate New Zealanders of the places they need in MIQ to come home? Are those 'contingency' places available only to overseas entertainers? Does the government really believe that we are thick enough to buy that?

How is it that, when there were no places in MIQ for this man with brain cancer and his family at 6pm on Saturday, places were found by 6.15? The cynic might put that down to the effect of publicity, which it obviously was, but the fact seemingly remains that the family were told that no places were available when they were. We, and more importantly this man and his family, were lied to. However embarrassed the government might have been over this appalling decision, it cannot conjure up MIQ places that don't exist.

Or have 14 people who had booked those places now been told they can't have them?

And just how far up the ladder should the Wiggles be, even without this particular emergency? We have known for months that thousands of New Zealanders are desperate to get home to their families and/or jobs, but cannot because of a lack MIQ places. They have a lower priority than others, like overseas movie-makers, cricket players, America's Cup connections, even a bunch of Australians who sold tickets for their tour before they knew they could come here, and have now benefited from direct intervention by none other than the Prime Minister.

Last week we were told that a cruise ship, coming here to take Covid-free New Zealanders around their own country, was parked 300 miles offshore because 61 of the 90 crew, those who were not responsible for actually sailing the vessel, did not have visas. Their jobs, we were told, could and should be filled by New Zealanders, although the cruising industry said the company had followed standard practice.

Is this how the cruise industry works now? Do ships come here then recruit the staff they need to take on passengers? According to Kris Faafoi it is. Bad luck for an industry that is desperately trying to avoid bankruptcies and save hundreds of New Zealanders' jobs.

At least the government and its various ministries seem to have got past the habit of telling us they are doing something when in fact they are not. Most egregiously we were told that returnees were being tested at various stages of their quarantine when they were not, that returnees were self-isolating when they were not, and that the police would be checking that they were doing so when they were not. But the MIQ process is still hopelessly inept.

We are now told, yet again, what we have long known, that the risk of community transmission is greatly increased by the practice of allowing those who have been in quarantine for some time, and are nearing the point of 'release,' to mingle with more recent arrivals, who might well be infected. That renders the final clearance of returnees as free of Covid-19 meaningless. The Northland woman, and the Auckland man and child who were let loose and have since tested positive, are all the evidence we need of that.

Last week John Campbell posited that this particular problem could be avoided by ensuring that those who are already in quarantine do not have contact with more recent arrivals. Good grief. Give that man a Nobel prize. That has been obvious from Day 1, hasn't it? And still we're not doing it. And now we're told that maybe it's the ventilation system at Auckland's Pullman Hotel that is spreading this virus. Maybe it's old-fashioned incompetence.

And then there are the mixed messages we've been getting, and are still getting, out here in the general public. Last week Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said, again, following the news that a Northland woman had tested positive, that only those who were symptomatic or had visited any of the places she had been to needed to be tested. That didn't stop thousands of people, as far north as Kaitaia, where one imagines very few qualified under those criteria, from queuing, some of them for hours. The vast majority of those people were tested, totally needlessly, but worse, some who should have been weren't.

One woman in Whangārei said last week that she had been told by health staff that she would not be tested because she had been at a store visited by the positive Northland case an hour after her. If it had been half an hour she would have been tested. From the start we have been told that this virus can survive on surfaces for days, but now it seems that it has a shelf life of no more than 30 minutes.

Another woman, her grandmother, mother and nephew were turned away because while they said they had been to some of the premises visited by the infected woman, they hadn't scanned in and couldn't prove it.

There's more. A Whangārei man said he had been in contact with people who had served the Covid-positive woman, and went into the same stores, but he too was told that he did not qualify for a test, despite the fact that he had been unwell for several days, with "the sweats" and muscle pain. He was just the person Bloomfield keeps telling us should be tested, but he wasn't. And he works at a retirement village.

Does anyone still believe that the bullet we keep dodging is being deflected by an effective, efficient government response to this pandemic?

What we are being told depends on who is doing the telling. There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to any of this, and simple, obvious lessons that should have been learned since April last year haven't been.

God luck. We're going to need it for some time yet.